Delhi (13 page)

May. The lid is off the fires of
gehennum.
Searing heat, spiralling dust devils, eye-scorching glare, tarmac on the road shimmering like quicksilver. Not a breath of life. No mad dogs, no nothing. Only the noonday sun.

The car seat burns. ‘
Hai Ram
!’ groans Bhagmati and raises her bottom to let the seat get cooler. ‘Ouch!’ I cry in my wog style. ‘Just touch the steering wheel.’ I grab her hand and put it on the steering wheel. She withdraws it with a jerk. ‘Has some doctor ordered us to go out and get sunstroke?’

We take the Qutub road. Past the mausoleum of Safdar Jang, through the rash of bungalows that have smothered Yusuf Sarai and all the Khilji, Tughlak and Mughal monuments that once dominated the landscape. At Qutub Minar we turn sharp left and go through village Lado Sarai. There is a lot of activity at the well. Jat women vigorously hauling up buckets of water and pouring them into pitchers lined on the parapet. Two young ones bathing. Not a stitch on them. They see our car. They put their hands between their thighs and turn their large buttocks towards us. I slow down to have a good look. A woman picks up a clod of mud and hurls it at us. I laugh. They laugh. These Jat women are tall, full-bosomed, slender-waisted, well-stacked. They carry their pitchers on their heads and stride along flouncing their skirts like the queens of Amazonia. I ask Bhagmati ‘Don’t you think these Jat females are the most beddable women in Hindustan?’

‘Other men’s wives and sisters are always more fuckable than one’s own. A home-bred chicken tastes no better than lentils.’ Bhagmati believes in the wisdom of cliches.

We are out of Lado Sarai. And again the hot, shimmering tarmac and an expanse of dun-coloured plains. The shadow of the car speeds ahead of us. A tumulus on our left gradually becomes a stone wall, the stone wall becomes a massive battlement of grey and red rock towering sixty feet or more above the ground. We go along an avenue of ancient banyans. I pull up under the shade. On my left is an arched gateway leading into the citadel of Tughlakabad; on my right a viaduct leads to the tomb of the builder Ghiasuddin Tughlak. Its sloping red walls and white marble dome rise above its fortress-like enclosure.

What’s happened to all the urchins who hang around to look after visitors’ cars? Midweek, midsummer. No visitors no urchins. Calls for a celebration. We celebrate.

‘What’s that?’ shouts Bhagmati pointing to a furry hand with black, tapering fingers clutching the rim of the windscreen. Up comes the face of a rhesus monkey with a request for food
kho-kho-kho-kho
. Bhagmati screams and clings to me. The monkey takes fright, scampers away across the road displaying its bright red posterior.

Bhagmati nestles in my arms, I push her away. There is another somebody at the door. ‘Sahib, I’ll look after your car.’

Before I can say ‘Okay,’ another boy turns up. ‘Sahib, it is my turn. He looked after the last car; didn’t you?’

They begin to quarrel, ‘Sahib, didn’t I ask you first? Sahib, it’s not his turn—you decide.’ More urchins come along and clamour for the right to guard my car. I step out, take one by the scruff of his neck. ‘This fellow will look after my car. He’s the only one I will give money to.’

That settles it. Or does it? Four boys follow us up the path leading to the gate of Tughlakabad fort.

‘Sahib, we will show you round the ruins of Tughlakabad.’

‘I know them quite well,’ I reply. ‘We don’t need a guide.’

‘Sahib this is the main gate of the fort.’

‘I know. You don’t have to tell me,
jao.
’

‘This hollow on the left was a tank; it used to supply drinking water to Tughlakabad.’

‘I’ve told you once, I do not need a guide. Go away.’

‘Sahib, these are the remains of the Meena Bazaar, the women’s market.’

I turn on them. ‘Bugger off!’

They run away a little distance and shout back at me: ‘Bugger off.’ Bhagmati and I proceed up the paved pathway through the ruins: gun emplacements, mosques, markets and up to the highest point. We survey the landscape: the Qutub Minar to the west, Ghiasuddin Tughlak’s tomb to the south, the ruins of the Qasr-i-hazaar-Sutoon palace and Shahr-i-Nau to the east. We retrace our steps and turn off on a path, thread our way through the debris and goats nibbling at
vasicka
bushes. We are at the edge of the battlement. A hundred feet below us is a pool full of water buffaloes. This is all that remains of what was once a moat encircling the citadel of Tughlakabad. And what goes by the name of Tughlakabad today is a huddle of flat-roofed brick-houses and mud-huts. The rest of the landscape is a rocky, treeless plain dotted with ruins among which new buildings are erupting like red fungus.

Bhagmati takes my hand.

‘
Arre
! She’s taken the Sardar’s hand.’ The bastards are still there. Bhagmati takes over. ‘Will you get away from here or do you a rod up your arswant es?’ she asks striding towards them. They run away as fast as they can with the goats scampering after them. Bhagmati comes back triumphantly. We sit down on the rampart. She nestles her head on my chest. ‘Tell me why are some monkeys’ balls and behinds red?’

‘I don’t know. I am told they become red when they are randy.’

‘Do your balls become red when
chotey mian
(the little gentleman) becomes
badey mian
(big gentleman)?’

It takes me a while to catch on. ‘I have never looked; besides I am not a monkey.’

‘Our fathers’ fathers were,’ she pronounces very scholarlike. ‘I must look next time. I’ll bring a flashlight with me.’

We sit and talk and look at the world below us. Bhagmati nibbles my ear and feels my middle to make sure that
chotey
mian
is still there.

The sun’s rays lose their sting. The sun becomes a large, orange balloon. Lines of crows flap their wings towards the city. Flocks of parakeets streak across the grey sky. From Tughlakabad village a million sparrows rise, wheel over the tops of
keekar
trees and then settle down on them in a bedlam of twitters.

The orange sun goes down in a haze of dust. Village lads urge their buffaloes to get out of the pond. Their shouts mingle with chirruping of the sparrows and the forlorn barking of dogs. Then an eerie silence descends on the ancient ruins. Even Bhagmati has run out of words. I tell her of the varieties of silence in a language she does not understand.

There is silence where hath been no sound,

There is silence where no sound may be,

In the cold wave—under the deep, deep sea,

Or in wide desert where no life is found,

Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;

No voice is hushed—no life treads silently,

But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,

That never spoke, over the idle ground:

But in green ruins, in the desolate walls,

Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,

Though the dun fox or wild hyaena calls,

And owls, that flit continually between,

Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan-

These true silence is, self-conscious and alone.

The evening stars shine in the grey sky. A soft breeze begins to blow. After the hot wind it feels cool, soporific. My eyes are heavy with sleep. I ruffle Bhagmati’s hair. She has fallen asleep. I shut my eyes and am lost to the world.

I waken with a feeling of someone looking at me. It is the full moon shining in my face. A
papeeha
comes out of the grey sky and settles on a crag a few feet away. It raises its head to the moon and fills the haunted landscape with its plaintive cries
pee ooh, pee ooh
.

‘Listen Eugenia!’ Her name is not Eugenia but Bhagmati. The bird is not the nightingale but a Hawk Cuckoo. Nevertheless its full-throated bursts come crowding through the moonlight.

Eternal passion!

Eternal pain!

*

Sometime after this I have my encounter with the bees.

Delhi has a rich variety of bees of which one species, the
apis historicus Delhiana
, is noted for its attachment to the past. Habitat: high vaulted arches with special preference for the pre-Mughal, Mughal, post-Mughal, Lutyens and Baker. Size of hive: the most massive known in the beeworld. Natural enemies: the urchins of Delhi who torment it with stone, brick, dung smoke and flaming rags. Natural victims: unsuspecting, absent-minded, old men who visit historical monuments to daydream.

One afternoon I find myself at Hauz Khas. Although it is late April and very hot, this old
madrasa
is so designed that hot winds passing through the maze of its ancient walls turn cool. I am seated on the floor of a colonnaded verandah reclining against a grey, sandstone column. On my left is a freshly mown lawn with a sprinkler spreading rainbows; the bullock and the lawn-mower both rest in the shade of a
neem
tree. Facing me is the tomb of Sultan Firoze Shah Tughlak with its lofty plaster-dome black with age. And about fifty feet below me on my right is a muddy pond black with buffaloes. This is all that remains of the huge tank, the Hauz-i-Alai, dug by Sultan Alauddin Khilji to provide water for his new city, Siri. Of the city the only surviving evidence is a litter of disjointed walls and a gate.

The warm breeze-turned-cool drones in my ears. Above my head martins chitter in their mud-feathered nests. From the floor below come the strains of a Hindi film song and the voices of men playing cards. In the lengthening shadow cast by the ancient school of learning, village boys play tipcat. Bhagmati is not with me and the calm and peace of the surroundings are conducive to daydream.

What did they teach at this
madrasa
? Astronomy, astrology, mathematics, chemistry and the
Quran
? Boys sitting in rows chanting their tables? Whatever happened to Siri and the great tank which supplied its drinking water? Was it still there when Taimur, the club-footed Mongol, sacked Delhi and slew 50,000 of my citizen-ancestors? How long did it take to repopulate the city?

I see the scenes of horror which must have taken place around Hauz-i-Alai during the massacre. Men sitting on their haunches with their hands tied behind them and necks bent low; the flash of scimitars and heads rolling away from bodies; spurts of blood, the tops of spines sticking out. Shrieking, wailing mothers, wives and sisters. Children benumbed with terror. The Mongolian shadow of God on earth enjoying the scene from somewhere near where I am sitting. If only I had been there, armed with a modern sharpshooters’s rifle fitted with a telescopic sight, I would have climbed a tree beyond bowshot and shot the lame bastard dead. I would have picked out his generals and one after another sent them to hell. I would have created panic in the ranks of the Mongols, Turks, Tartars and all the other Central Asian savages. The Delhiwallas would then have risen against them, slaughtered thousands like goats and sent the rest screaming back to Samarkand.

A stone narrowly misses my head and crashes down on the floor. I see a pack of urchins scuttling away into Firoze Shah’s tomb. ‘
Oi, oi, oi
,’ I yell. ‘You
harami
...’ Before I can tell them what I will do to their mothers and sisters, a swarm of
apis
historicus Delhiana
descends on me. I flail my arms. I run like one pursued by the devil. They follow me attacking my face, neck, arms. I unwrap my turban, wrap my face and arms in its folds, and crouch on the ground. I can hear the card-players shouting for help as they run to safety and the grass-mower’s bullock bellowing on its way to the village. The assault continues for five hellishly long minutes before it is called off. I pluck dead bees off my body. I pick two caught in the meshes of my beard and get stung on the tips of my fingers. My flesh begins to swell, my fingers become too fat to be useful, my body tingles all over. I run back to my car and drive as fast as I can to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.

By the time I enter the emergency ward my eyes are almost closed and parts of my body are numb. I muscle my way through the crowd into the clinic. It looks like the third-class passengers’ waiting-room of Delhi railway station. Men, women and children are sprawled all over the floor. A bearded patriarch lies on a stretcher tracing patterns on the wall with his legs. There is a cluster round the doctor’s table. I push my way through: I am more ‘emergency’ than most of them. Bee-stings on the neck and the ears can be fatal unless attended to at once. The doctor is talking on the phone. In his left hand he holds the instrument; in his right, a syringe. He talks away as he presses air bubbles out of the needle. Facing him is a fourteen-year-old girl with her chemise raised over her shoulders. My half-shut eyes focus on her young bosombuds. Her mother glowers at me and turns angrily to the doctor: ‘You want to expose my child to the world?’ The doctor says ‘One minute,’ puts the receiver on the table, stabs the needle into the girl’s belly and tells her to come again tomorrow. He picks up the phone. ‘Doctor, I’ve been stung by bees, please...’ He says ‘Excuse me,’ into the phone in English and snaps at me in Punjabi. ‘You are not dying! Take your turn.’ He apologizes to the phone and lists his favourite restaurants: Moti Mahal, Gaylord, Laguna. He warns the fellow or lady at the other end of the line about crows being served instead of chicken and blobs of blotting-paper mixed in .
kulfi. Ha, ha.
I slap my numbed hands on the table and scream. The fellow says ‘Sorry, too many patients. I’ll ring later. Ta-ta.’ Then he turns to me in a raging temper. ‘You beesting walla, don’t you see I am busy?’ he says in Punjabi. I reply in my
haw haw
Oxbridge: ‘Busy, my fucking foot! Discussing restaurants and food with some broad while people here are in agony. I’ll report you to the Health Minister; I’ll write letters to every paper. Who the bloody hell do you think you are?’ English works like magic in independent India. The bugger examines my stings, gives me a massive shot of something and tells me that I am lucky to be alive. Then adds humbly, ‘Please forgive me for the delay. I am only an intern.’